Will
you build a brochure website or a content website?
Before
you make any choices about your website you must choose the type
of site that will best benefit your business.
The
first and most important decision you will make about your website
is will it be a brochure website or a content
website, which is
also called an authority website.
A
brochure website, as the name suggests, is an online version of a
company brochure, with the same information found in a printed
brochure such
as the company name, location, contact info, list of services & professional
certifications and associations, and perhaps a few pictures of
the employees and products.
The
advantage of a brochure site is that it is relatively easy and cheap
to create. You can just give a printed brochure and
maybe a few digital
pictures to your web designer and get a website built quickly
and for a few hundred dollars or less.
The
downside of a brochure site is it will usually not get much free
traffic from the search engines. Most brochure sites
are
very “thin” on
information, with text from a 2 page brochure stretched out
into perhaps a 7 page website. They often have less than
125 words per page, and
search
engines do not like such thinly populated pages.
If
someone searches for the exact name of your business at Google your
website will show
up, but probably not if they search for any of the products
or services you provide. People who already know about
you
will be able to find
you, but you will probably not be able to bring in many
new customers with
a just a brochure website.
If
you decide on a brochure site you must also have some way of bringing
traffic to the site such as an advertising
campaign
using
printed, electronic,
or online ads.
An
authority site or content site contains information on a specific
subject, preferably information that has
a high
demand
online.
The key to a content site is to find out what topics
people search for related
to the theme of the web site, and provide expert information
on those topics.
You
need to use a keyword research tool to find out
just what
people are searching for online, and actually build
a site to provide the information that people are looking for!
This is
a very powerful
method of drawing free traffic.
What should you put on a content website?
If
you have never used a keyword research tool you will be amazed to
actually see what people are looking for on the web.
You
can actually get inside the heads of your potential customers. Before
you make
any decisions about your web site you should run all of
the
keywords
related to your business thru the Google Adwords keyword tool.
You
will learn a lot about your customers and what they are searching
for. Once you know what information your customers want it will
be relatively straightforward to create web pages that will solve
their
problems and answer their questions.
The
first step in building a content website is to do some basic keyword
research. The Google Adwords tools the best way to get started.
Click
here for the Google’s
Adwords Keyword Research Tool
SiteSell
has a powerful system for doing keyword research, turning that into
a site plan, and then building a website
that the search engines and your site visitors will love!
Click here for a quick tour of the SiteSell
website system.
